- Invoice Counts and Customer Counts Paint Less Rosy Picture

HAMILTON, N.J., Oct. 11, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Billtrust, the leading outsourced billing services provider, today announced the September data release of the Billtrust B2B Sales Index™ as well as the debut of two new B2B measures: the Billtrust B2B Invoice Counts Index and the Billtrust B2B Customer Counts Index. The Billtrust B2B Sales Index, an indicator of U.S. economic trends based on a reliable sampling of business-to-business invoice activity, increased 1.5% for the month of September.

Billtrust's additional two metrics pertain to customer counts and invoice counts to provide a more complete picture of B2B trends. The new indexes were derived by the same methodology as the Billtrust B2B Sales Index; for September, the Billtrust B2B Invoice Counts Index gained 0.1%, and the Billtrust B2B Customer Counts Index declined 0.1%.

Overseeing the Billtrust B2B Indexes is Arthur A. Ferri, Ph.D., Advanced Analytics Consultant for Billtrust. Ferri was formerly Associate Professor in the Finance and Economics Division of Columbia Business School. He holds a doctorate in finance and international business from NYU's Stern School of Business. "Our last two reports were remarkably similar to the U.S. Department of Commerce's reports on new home purchases. And the increase in volatility of our Sales Index mirrors the timing of higher volatility in new home purchases," said Ferri.

The B2B Invoice Counts Index treats all invoices with positive amounts due as equivalents. The B2B Customer Counts Index measures the component firms' customer base that generated a given month's invoices.

Ferri commented, "Although invoice dollars were up in the past two months, invoice counts and customer counts were essentially flat compared to May. The recent divergence between invoice dollars and invoice counts suggests inflation may have accelerated in the B2B sector."

Invoice Counts were at 100.0, 99.2, 98.3, 100.2, and 100.3 for May through September, respectively. Customer Counts were at 100.0, 99.5, 98.9, 99.6, and 99.6 for the same months.

"I am encouraged to see Billtrust's additional provision of private-sector data that are relevant to the financial markets," said Tom Sowanick, Co-President & Chief Investment Officer, OmniVest Group LLC. "Given recent developments in Washington and how that affects reporting of economic data, reliable private-sector information is increasingly important."

Currently serving more than 1,000 corporate customers that represent over 250 million transactions and over $200 billion in annual receivables, Billtrust is a pioneer in the fast-growing e-billing industry. Its menu of services spans a range of paper and online billing channels for the delivery and payment of invoices and statements.